Osama bin Laden was within US reach in '01: report

Osama bin Laden was cornered in the Afghan mountains in 2001 but the United States did not deploy massive force to capture or kill the al-Qaeda leader, a Senate report says.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, to be formally released Monday, blames former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and General Tommy Franks, the former American commander, for not sending more U.S. troops after Osama bin Laden.
"The failure to finish the job," the report said, "represents a lost opportunity that forever altered the course of the conflict in Afghanistan and the future of international terrorism, leaving the American people more vulnerable to terrorism, laying the foundation for today's protracted Afghan insurgency and inflaming the internal strife now."
The report said emphatically Osama bin Laden was in a complex of caves and tunnels in Tora Bora in December 2001 before escaping to Pakistan.
But the report said the U.S. command severely limited its capacity to get to the al-Qaeda leader. The command relied on airstrikes, American Special Operations, CIA officers and untrained Afghan militants to go after bin Laden and on loosely organized Pakistani corps to block his escape, the report said.
"The vast array of American military power, from sniper teams to the most mobile divisions of the Marine Corps and the Army, was kept on the sidelines," the report said.